Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more grayEach one than what had gone beforeDust and ash everywhere. Charted and limbless trunks ofTrees stretching away on every sideAsh moving over the road and the sagging handsOf blind wire strung from the blackened lightpolesWhining thinly in the windThe shape of a city stood in the graynessLike a charcoal drawing sketched across the wasteNothing to see the cold and the silenceIf only my heart were stone. No sign of life.The blackness she woke to on those nightsWas sightless and impenetrableA blackness to hurt your ears with listeningNo sound but the wind in the bare and blackened treesShe rose and stood toffering in thatCold autistic dark with her armsOut held balance... For falling... For falling... For falling...